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Business Ethics and the Challenge of the Information Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Richard T. De George
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Abstract:

The standard ethical issues of business, so familiar to those in business ethics, are all being transformed as the Industrial Age is giving way to the Information Age. In the Information Age companies are learning to do business in new ways. The computer has entered and is entering more and more into all the realms of business so that it leaves none of them unchanged. This means that marketing is done differently, that manufacturing is done differently, that management is done differently, and so on.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 2000 , pp. 63 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2000

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References

1 For a fuller explanation of the Myth of Amoral Business see, Richard T. De George, Business Ethics, 5th ed. (New York: Prentice Hall, 1999), chapter 1.

2 See Richard T. De George, “The Status of Business Ethics: Past and Future,” Journal of Business Ethics 6 (1987): 201–211.

3 Leslie Kaufman, “Levi Strauss to Shut Half of Its Factories in U.S. and Canada,” The New York Times, February 23, 1999, p. 1.

4 In his State of the Union address (“The Text of the President’s State of the Union Address to Congress,” The New York Times, January 20, 1999, p. A22), President Clinton called for the end of child labor—a noble and ethical end, but more difficult to achieve than to call for. And what multinationals do in the interim until all societies effectively prohibit child labor—which for many means ending widespread poverty—is a complicated issue.

5 On January 31, 1999, Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations, addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, called on firms collectively and through their business associations “to embrace, support and enact a set of core values in the areas of human rights, labor standards, and environmental practices … areas in which universal values have already been defined by international agreements … and areas … where …if we do not act, there may be a threat to the open global market.”

6 Paul Lewis, “Corporate Conduct Code is Proposed for Third World Nations,” The New York Times, April 29, 1999, p. A7.

7 President William J. Clinton, “Remarks By the President at Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1998 Commencement,” June 5, 1998.

8 Based on the Gartner Group’s widely reported estimate. See, for example, Lee Gomes, “Why Prepping Mainframes for 2000 Is So Tough,” The Wall Street Journal, December 9, 1996, p. B1.

9 Emily Nelson, “Logistic Whiz Rises at Wal-Mart,” Wall Street Journal, March 11, 1999, p. Bl.

10 See Richard T. De George, “Computer, Ethics and Business,” Philosophic Exchange, 1997–1998, pp. 44–55.

11 Edmund L. Andrews, “European Law Aims to Protect Privacy of Data,” The New York Times, October 26, 1998, p. 1.

12 Copyright Term Extension (Public Law 105-298) was signed by President Clinton on October 27, 1998.

13 The U.S. Supreme Court in Diamond v. Diehr (450 U.S. 175 [1981]) upheld the first granting of an algorithm-related patent.

14 Don Clark, “Intel Rushes to Modify User-Identification Chip,” The Wall Street Journal, January 26, 1999, p. B7; John Markoff, “Intel Goes to Battle as Its Embedded Serial Number Is Unmasked,” The New York Times, April 29, 1999, p. C1.